Iris Melanomas in Children

When a child or young adult is diagnosed with cancer, the family is
generally anxious to know the prognosis. Although it is never possible to
state the prognosis for an individual patient, Singh et al1
provide some statistical data useful for counseling. They report 5- and 15-year
survival estimates of 0.95 and 0.77, respectively, for 63 patients who were
aged 20 years or younger at the time of diagnosis, 4 of whom later died of
metastasis. They conclude that "young patients with uveal melanoma have short-term
(5-year) survival better than that of adults" based on a comparison with 2
previous reports on uveal melanoma.2,3